Method and apparatus for reducing a program size while maintaining branching time properties and automated checking of such reduced programs

a technology of branching time and program size, applied in the field of automatic program checking techniques, can solve the problems of difficult testing or verification of software programs, too restrictive,

Inactive Publication Date: 2005-01-13
LUCENT TECH INC
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  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

Generally, a method and apparatus are provided a method and apparatus for reducing a program that preserves branching time properties. In particular, the invention simultaneously preserves the existential and universal aspects of a branching time property, and does not rely on bisimulation. The disclosed program abstraction method abstracts an alternating transition system (ATS) formed by a product M×A of a program, M, with an alternating tree automaton, A, for a property. An abstract domain contains a set of abstr...

Problems solved by technology

Software programs can often be difficult to test or verify.
Unfortunately, to preserve all branching tim...

Method used

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  • Method and apparatus for reducing a program size while maintaining branching time properties and automated checking of such reduced programs
  • Method and apparatus for reducing a program size while maintaining branching time properties and automated checking of such reduced programs
  • Method and apparatus for reducing a program size while maintaining branching time properties and automated checking of such reduced programs

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Embodiment Construction

As shown in FIG. 1, the present invention provides a program abstraction method 200, discussed below in conjunction with FIG. 2, that abstracts a program, M, while preserving one or more branching time properties, f, and in particular, while simultaneously preserving the existential and universal aspects of a branching time property. Generally, the program abstraction method 200 abstracts an alternating transition system (ATS) formed by the product of a program with an alternating tree automaton for a property. As discussed further below, the program abstraction method 200 also receives a user-specified abstract domain and abstract relations, and generates an abstract program with an altered property. The abstract program with an altered property is then checked by an automated program checker 150, such as a model checker.

Automated Program Checking Concepts

As the verification problem is generally undecidable, even for invariance properties, no algorithm is known that can always ...

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Abstract

A method and apparatus are provided a method and apparatus for reducing a program that preserves branching time properties, including existential and universal aspects. An alternating transition system (ATS) is abstracted, formed by a product of a program, M, with an alternating tree automaton, A, for a property, f. The disclosed program abstraction method generates the abstract program and an altered version of the branching time property, f. An automated program check, such as a model check, is performed on the abstract program for the altered branching time property. The invention provides semantic completeness: i.e., whenever a program satisfies a property, this can be shown using a finite-state abstract ATS produced by the method. Choice predicates can be employed to help resolve nondeterminism at OR states, and rank functions can be employed to help preserve progress properties.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates generally to automated program checking techniques, and more particularly, to methods and apparatus for reducing the size of programs prior to such automated program checking techniques. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Software programs can often be difficult to test or verify. In order to efficiently and effectively evaluate software programs, it is often necessary to reduce the size of the program, for example, using abstraction techniques. Most current abstraction methods preserve universal temporal properties, such as those expressible in linear temporal logic (LTL) and Universal Computation Tree Logic (ACTL). In several settings, there is a need for methods that preserve branching time properties, including mixed existential and universal branching time properties. For example, branching time properties must be maintained to analyze programs with unresolved non-determinism, or to analyze process-environment interaction. See, fo...

Claims

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Application Information

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IPC IPC(8): G06F9/44G06F9/45
CPCG06F17/504G06F8/43G06F30/3323
Inventor NAMJOSHI, KEDAR SHARADCHANDRA
Owner LUCENT TECH INC
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